


these hollow bones

by MashpotatoeQueen5



Category: The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Empath, Families of Choice, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Harm to Children, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired By Tumblr, Leodropha Curtain is creepy, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Reynie Muldoon owns my whole heart, Reynie is an empath au, Unconventional Families, having powers isn't always fun, i literally love these kids so much what the hell, i wrote it in two hours, this fic possesed my soul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:15:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28813302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MashpotatoeQueen5/pseuds/MashpotatoeQueen5
Summary: Reynie is an empath.It doesn't change things. Much.
Relationships: Constance Contraire & Reynie Muldoon, Reynie Muldoon & Kate Wetherall, Reynie Muldoon & Miss Perumal, Reynie Muldoon & Sticky Washington
Comments: 14
Kudos: 29





	these hollow bones

**Author's Note:**

> In honour of cronch-goes-the-weasel, who inspired this over on tumblr with their post...
> 
> hope you all enjoy!

Reynie Muldoon has always been a little bit odd according to the others in the orphanage. He reads instead of sitting in front of the telly, and enjoys tea over sweets, and has an uncanny way of knowing exactly what anyone is feeling at any moment in time.

The children call it being nosy, and this isn’t true in the slightest. The caretakers call it perceptiveness, and Reynie is indeed a very perceptive little boy, but that isn’t it either. Miss Perumal calls it being empathetic, calls it being kind, and she is perhaps the closest of them all.

He thinks.

Reynie isn’t quite sure what to call the emotions that linger around people, all the days of their lives. They’re not quite colours and they’re not quite shapes, but perhaps something in between. There’s an emphasis to them, and most of the time he can just watch the way the emotions dance around the people who carry them, but sometimes he can’t. Sometimes the emotions seem to curl up into the hollows of his bones, the hollows of his chest, and there’s nothing he can quite do about it. 

In an orphanage full of isolation and children’s particular brands of cruelty, this is both a blessing and a curse. He wonders if it is harder or easier to bear bullying and snide comments when you know exactly how much your peers are aching underneath their anger.

There is nothing in the books of the orphanage library about this particular ability. Nothing in the human biology books and nothing in the psychology books he requests Miss Perumal to please bring him, if she gets a chance. She had agreed with a smile, and her heart had sung  _ fond, fond, charmed, bemused, happy, fond,  _ and a little of something else Reynie hadn’t quite known how to name.

Miss Perumal is a gift. Miss Perumal is sunlight, and her emotions project out in warm waves. He soaks them up in that last hug before he goes to take a test made for extraordinary children, tries to carry them with him when he walks into the room full of children projecting nerves and fear and utterly bolstered confidence. The girl with wild green hair is curious and driven and determined. The woman at the front looks bored but feels curious, too, feels jittery, feels a little impatient. She nibbles on some pickles and those stirring feelings settle.

And so it goes.

The day unfolds long, and Reynie grows tired and hungry and then tireder and hungrier, the emotions of those around him seem to get louder and louder because of it. 

The tasks, the rush of new people, the rush of  _ everything,  _ almost distracts him from it. 

Almost.

Sticky is practically all fears and tender trust and gaping insecurities, bundled and tangled in knots over a deeper lingering hurt. Later, Reynie will hear the story of that hurt, sitting on the steps of a building that will one day become home. Later, Reynie will watch as all those insecurities bleed way to budding joy and a sort of centeredness that fits on his friend like a glove. 

Later.

Kate gives him whiplash, the first time he meets her, with how fast her emotions flicker to and fro. She can be blindingly happy and excited only to give way to a deep dark bitterness and anger that feels like it could swallow him whole. Kate feels the way she does everything, with no hesitations, no remorse, and putting her entire self into every which thing. 

Constance’s emotions are big in the way only very small children’s emotions tend to be, and it is more than a little jarring. Toddlers, he’s found, have little finesse to their emotions, forever stuck in moments and lost in undercurrents. He finds himself treating her younger than her intellect suggests because of it, sometimes, and only at the end of their journey will he find out he is right on the mark.

But that is later, later, later, and for now Reynie carries the weight of four exhausted children in the hollows of his bones instead of just the one. It makes him more irritable than he would like, more out of control than he is used too. When they meet Milligan, he hiccups on tears at that choking loss and sadness. When he meets Mr. Benedict, he sees past that authentic warmth and kindness to find the underlying fear, and feels it as his own.

At L.I.V.E academy, Mr. Curtain’s anger, ambition, and sparking hunger for power leave him sick to his stomach. It is Reynie, sitting in that night’s Mysterious Benedict Society meeting that insists insists  _ insists  _ that this is not Mr. Benedict, could not be Mr. Benedict.

The emotions don’t match. The emotions don’t dance the same. They sank into his chest and instead of making him feel as if he was sitting across a warm campfire he had felt like he was sitting in front of a pit of vipers. The man in the wheelchair had been entirely hollow and the man back at the house had been brimming with life.

It couldn’t be Mr. Benedict.

“How do you know?” Kate asks, and her eyes hold steady, and Reynie doesn’t know how to tell them, the words fumble on his tongue. They’re scared, all of them are scared they have walked into a trap, and he can’t reassure them, can’t face rejection, and he has never felt so unbrave in his life. 

Reynie will tell them, one day, a few months or so from this moment. His hands will shake while he does it, but he will stumble through each word and watch as their emotions swell, as they sing, blinding with their  _ trust, trust, care, affection, fond, fond, fond,  _ and something else he can’t quite name.

For now, they figure out riddles and search for truths, work as a team and find solutions. It is frustrating and aggravating and he carries their pains like he carries his own. But he also carries their joys, their laughs, and there is something building here, he thinks, between them. Something warmer and fiercer and gentler than he has ever known, and he holds it in the palms of his hands and thinks it is beautiful.

Unfortunately, Mr. Curtain continues to be terrifying.

The first time Reynie is used by the Whisperer is the first time the emotions leave him. In another universe, a little girl’s stubbornness and brilliant mind of unique abilities makes her the Whisperer’s greatest opposer. In this universe, Reynie’s abilities make him all too vulnerable.

He sits on that chair and the whispers come, and this is a boy who has carried the emotions of others all the days of his life. How easy is it, then, to trick his hands into carrying viler things? To make a lightning rod out of a child?

They sit there for hours, and it is still overwhelmingly soothing and coaxing. But afterwards, Reynie stumbles out of that chair and feels exhaustion pour out of every inch of his body. He staggers back to his bedroom and everyone he encounters feels like a mannequin, blank and lifeless.

It is only in the morning that he realizes it felt this way because he hadn’t been picking anything up from them. The emotions had vanished, briefly, into nothing, and it feels so wildly wrong he is left shaking from it. 

Mr. Curtain, the next time he sees him, has something new in the commotion above his head. Reynie’s shoulders hunch upwards: for all that his life has been full of hardships, no one has ever looked at him with greed before.

(This leaves him shaking, too.)

In this world, Reynie is more scared more often, knowing all too well how much hatred and apathy their enemies hold for them. He is perhaps braver, too, for facing those fears and embarking on those journeys despite it all. 

This Reynie is more trusting in some ways and less in others. He knows for a fact that Captain Nolan is genuine, that his care is very real. He knows, also, how easily greed overpowers good men, how little guilt can prevent danger to him and his friends, when it comes down to it. It takes longer to trust pieces of himself with others, and shorter times to have faith in goodness again.

They travel on a boat, on a plane, to an island. He carries his own doubts and fears and those of his friends. The Ten Men are terrifying in the way that they do not care if they hurt them. Number Two is terrifying, the way her emotions- usually so clear and succinct- are suddenly lost in a mess of confusion and despair. Mr. Curtain is terrifying in the way he is empty, the way he is always trying to fill himself up with something bigger than himself, his eyes full of greed. 

Constance sits with him sometimes, after that perilous journey, when the others are sleeping or when the world is quiet, and holds his hand. She tells him his thoughts are louder than the others, more clear. He tells her that her emotions are bigger and more overwhelming sometimes, too. They grin, then, in that quiet dark, two children with extraordinary abilities that no one else can quite understand. Matters of the mind and matters of the heart, entirely different in some ways and much closer together than many would suspect.

Mr. Benedict seems to believe it to be this way, at the very least. When Constance practices reading people’s thoughts, Reynie practices spurring other’s emotions. He and Sticky sit across from each other in an empty room holding hands, and Reynie focuses very, very hard. Sticky feels nervous, and also calm, but not particularly happy.

He wants to change that.

It takes almost ten minutes of intense focus, remembering silly jokes and sillier moments, Mulligan's ridiculous dance moves and the way he throws his whole body into joy, now, but suddenly his friend bursts out into laughter, high and cackling and loud. The humour had stemmed from somewhere in Reynie’s chest and passed over to Sticky, and he beams,  _ beams- _

And then he’s laughing, too, caught in a feedback loop of his friend’s happiness and his own, their silly amusement circling back and forth, back and forth, until they’re left splayed across the ground and lost in their breathy giggles. That night, they eat Moocho’s chocolate cake and clink their spoons together in a cheerful imitation of a fancy little toast. Mr. Benedict’s eye twinkle brightly, and the warmth is back again, growing, growing, growing-

It’s not all easy or good. Sometimes, in a house too full of people, all crammed inside at all hours, the emotions get overwhelming and loud, loud, loud. The dance becomes a storm and Reynie crams his hands over his ears even though there is no thunder and curls into himself. All those feelings are trying to find places to stay in the hollows of his bones and he does not have room to hold them.

Rhonda finds him, sometimes, and sits with him quietly, meditating until she is serene and still and easy to follow. Amma finds him other times, hauls him to his feet and guides them outside, brings them tea and wraps an arm around his shoulder, projecting that same feeling he has never quite been able to name, or perhaps has never quite dared to try.

Kate, too, comes to find him, and while the others are quiet she is loud. She pulls him into a hug and talks and talks and talks, and her emotions are brilliant and bright and present, cartwheeling in dizzying circles.  _ Concern,  _ they sing,  _ concern, care, fond, amused, concern, joy, joy, joy, joy. _ It is easy to get swept away by Kate, to fall into her blinding rhythm, and by the end of the hour he finds it more manageable to breathe again. 

They get captured again, and it isn’t fair. They are children with extraordinary abilities, but they are still _ children, _ and none of this is fair. Reynie feels it, sometimes, coming off the grownups, this twisting sort of bitterness at an unjust world.

But the grownups cannot reach them now, held in this prison. Reynie grew up lonely, but he had forgotten, in the last couple of years, how much being in a building of isolation where everyone simply doesn’t care about you drags you down. 

Almost everyone.

He is with his friends, at least, and he and Constance act as walking proximity alarms for whenever anyone draws near. The Whisperer still grabs onto him stronger than most, and Mr. Curtain still looks with too much greed in his eyes, and he thinks he and Constance both will need a long nap after all this is done. He thinks they all will.

He’s so proud of them. Proud of them for sticking together. Proud of them for pulling through. He’s terrified and he’s so, so fond.

They escape, and then they escape again with the help of the newly arrived cavalry, and everything is chaos, but even as the adults are grim and determined and scared, there is something buoying them up, holding them together, pushing them forwards. Something warm, something fiercer and kinder and gentler that Reynie has slowly come to know and hasn’t quite dared to name.

It’s love, he realizes, in that prison yard made battlefield. It feels like solving a riddle on the floor of a room surrounded by family of chance and choice. It feels like laughter that lingers for hours and small hands tugging at his own, chatter and smiles and secrets kept and told. It feels like sunshine. He holds it.

Mr. Curtain stands before them and he is empty, in so many ways. He is hollow in a way that Reynie will never understand. He wonders if the man before him sees mannequins instead of people. He wonders who hurt him, and for how long, and why.

(Is it harder or easier to bear cruelty when you know exactly how much everyone is aching underneath? After all this time, he still doesn’t know.)

_ Love, love, love- _

S.Q has it, brims with it, and Reynie realizes, grabbing onto those thrashing emotions above Mr. Curtain’s head, that the man has some of it in the hollows of his bones, too.

_ So feel it,  _ he thinks,  _ feel it,  _ and he pulls at it, pulls at it, thinks of Milligan laughing with Kate as they dance in the kitchen and Number Two tutting over Mr. Benedict in the foyer. Miss Perumal’s smile is always a little crooked when she listens to him talk about his most recent project and when Constance is particularly proud of her poetry she finds him to read aloud, bouncing on her toes. Sticky read him a book the other day, all his favourite passages, and they talked about it for hours until Rhonda had come in to scold them for staying up past midnight. 

It’s love. It’s all love. Reynie holds it and it is beautiful.

And suddenly, Mr. Curtain feels it, too. Or, more rather, he becomes aware of it, the way it sits in his chest buried under other things. He feels the way S.Q. sings with it, feels the way Mr. Benedict handles it in a sad and careful way in the palms of his hands. 

Mr. Curtain looks at Reynie. 

Reynie looks back.

He’s not sure why he wanted Mr. Curtain to realize it so bad, that there is more to him than anger and greed and cruelty. He does not think he will forgive him, not ever, for the way he hurt him, the way he hurt his friends. He doesn’t know if he believes the man deserves such a gentle fierce truth as love.

Perhaps he is just empathetic. Perhaps he is just kind.

In this universe, the story ends much the same as it has done in others. Mr. Curtain is detained, and the children get to go home, and they throw a party and Constance gets adopted and life rolls on, in just the way it does.

Changes happen, and they grow with them. Reynie sits on the floor surrounded by his friends and feels their joy, their cautious optimism and hesitance, the way their emotions dance. Reynie sits on the floor and he smiles, holds it all in his palms and fills himself up with it, fills every little crevice with this shining brilliant truth.

“What are you thinking, then, Reynie?” Sticky asks, blinking just a moment in his new contact lenses, and Constance snorts because she knows the answer.

“Oh,” Reynie says, and it surprises him, how honestly the words come out, “just about how much I love you guys.”

Kate grins and leans forwards. “Of course you love us, Mr. Muldoon.” She has a sticker on her cheek and she feels like sunshine. “The question is, can you tell that we love you, too?”

He smiles softly. “Actually,” the joke falls off his tongue so easily, now, “I think I can.”

And they laugh.


End file.
